Thoughts on university leadership
Over 20% of researchers have been pressured by journal editors to modify their articles in ways that manipulate the reputation of the journal. Journals are ranked by the citation rates of the articles they publish. Editors can manipulate their journal’s ranking by asking authors to include more citations of other articles in that very journal…. Read More…
Affirmative action is often criticized as giving unfair advantages. Different people are evaluated by different criteria, which inevitably lowers the quality of the selected group, is the claim.
The logic behind these claims is not hard to understand, but it may be wrong. For more of the truth about affirmative action…
Young women scientists leave academia in far greater numbers than men for three reasons. Sacrifice, little appeal and disproportionate impediments are conclusions made by PhD candidates, thus steering them away. What can we do about it? Read more to find out…
What are the best conditions for doing research? What can university leadership do to create those circumstances?
One of the most fundamental challenges for university presidents, deans, department chairs, and research group leaders is to make the best environment for research. Everything else a university does builds on success in doing science. Read more on why talking makes research better…
Gender-enhanced science is research in which deliberate efforts are made to include differences between men and women in research projects, especially those leading to product development.
The leading cause of fetal death resulting from maternal trauma is from car crashes. Yet seatbelts are developed based on research on male bodies. Read more…
Medical science improves our lives by developing treatments for illnesses. But if a treatment is going to work for everyone, research and testing must be done on a varied population. The challenges of science often lead to just the opposite situation. One way to test if a drug is actually having the hypothesized effect is to give it to several people who are otherwise as similar as possible. Medical treatments may therefore be developed without sufficient testing on both men and women. Read more…
The brightly colored Google logo, re-formed as a halo over the head of CEO Larry Page, caught my eye in an airport recently. Under Page’s picture, the cover of Fortune magazine promised a list of the 100 best workplaces, with Google at the head of the pack.
Is there any chance, any hope, any dream, that somewhere on that list, I might find a university?
To my disappointment, the promise on the cover of the 100 best “workplaces” was modified to “companies” on the inside of the magazine, and universities therefore weren’t even considered.
But what if they were? What would it take to get there? Is there anything we can learn from Google? Find out by reading more…
There are four key components to publishing, and they’re all about to change. Ten years from now, publishing will be done in ways that we are only beginning to envisage. Politics and profit will of course compel these changes. But the specific innovations coming our way will be driven by a generation of tweeters, bloggers, status… Read More…
The link below takes you to a video of my talk at the 6th Munin Conference, at which the theme was Enhancing Publications. In the talk, I explore Stuart Kauffman’s concept of the Adjacent Possible and imagine what it might mean in the context of thinking about the future of scientific publication. A very slightly… Read More…
Keep writing. Every day. That’s what the experts say. Maybe you just have time to write a single paragraph. Can you summarize what you wrote yesterday? Can you write a few notes about the next section in your project? Find your strategy and stick with it. Don’t succumb to Writer’s Block — but if you… Read More…
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